One of the precious few pieces of actual contemporary evidence we have of Adam Smith’s sojourn in Switzerland is a legal memorandum dated 10-11 December 1765 signed by one Madame Denis. (See Letter #89 in Mossner & Ross, editors, The Correspondence of Adam Smith.) As it happens, this memorandum is addressed not just to the Scottish philosopher but to “tous les gentils hommes anglais qui sont à genêve” (“all English gentlemen currently in Geneva”) and is significant for two further reasons: (1) its author, for Madame Denis was none other than Marie Louise Mignot (pictured below), Voltaire’s niece, housekeeper, and mistress, and (2) its contents: the memo reports a series of incidents (what Alain Alcouffe and I like to call “the fracas at Ferney” or Dillon Affair”) that had occurred in the woods near Voltaire’s residence at Ferney during the previous few days — events so egregious that Madame Denis had decided to press charges and initiate legal proceedings against the alleged perpetrator.

According to Madame Denis’s version of this fracas, the wrongdoer in this case was a young English aristocrat named “Dillon” who was hunting game illegally on Voltaire’s private property and had then hurled some violent threats against Voltaire, Madame Denis, and their hired gamekeeper (who, alas, remains unnamed). But as we shall see in our next post, Madame Denis’s memo does not tell the full story, for the alleged aggressor — Charles Dillon, who was residing in Geneva at this time as part of his Grand Tour and who later in life would become the 12th Viscount Dillon — would have a very good reason to be angry with Voltaire’s gamekeeper.

For now, it suffices to say that Adam Smith may have been a recipient of Madame Denis’s memo because he was most likely acquainted, either personally or by reputation, with the English aristocrat at the center of this legal controversy, especially given the small size of the Swiss city-state where Dillon, his tutor Needham, and Smith himself then resided. Stay tuned: Alain Alcouffe and I will tell you what really happened at Ferney in our next two posts.